Reflecting a restless spirit

Paris —  ALL is not well in France.

The darkness that has been building on the runways over the last few weeks intensified into something more menacing in Paris, where even Fashion Week couldn’t escape a sense of foreboding.

On what has been dubbed the “fashion flight” from Milan, those editors and buyers who actually eat were debating the safety of poultry now that bird flu has arrived on French shores. (You mean no roast chicken, no omelets, no foie gras?) The ride from the airport took you through the same neighborhoods where last summer immigrants protested rising unemployment and the lack of affordable housing. The newspapers are filled with reports on the fallout from last week, when religious tensions exploded after a Jewish mobile phone salesman was killed by a gang of Muslim criminals.

Still, the shows must go on, so the broadtail blanket coats came out, along with their platform-shod owners, for another round of luxury for the luckiest. But this being the capital of conceptual fashion, designers were not about to ignore the unrest.

Many reacted by protecting the body with oversized silhouettes, shrouding it in multiple layers or by covering models’ faces altogether. Rather than dressing women for subjugation, they were dressing them for domination as the ladylike view of fashion faded into the past.

At Christian Dior on Tuesday, the week’s first blockbuster show, the head-chopping French revolutionaries from John Galliano’s couture show in January morphed into the head-banging rebel rockers of his fall ready-to-wear collection.

Rock chick Kate Hudson and her husband, Black Crowes frontman Chris Robinson, were runway-side for Galliano’s Dior collection, in which models marched in long-haired wigs, aviator glasses and bandana head scarves a la Axl Rose. They wore kick-butt biker boots, shrunken leather jackets sprouting savage tufts of goat fur, lacquered denim miniskirts and belts with humongous tooled silver belt buckles.

But behind the 1980s rock ‘n’ roll references was some incredible workmanship. Colors were moody -- black, cream, putty and blood red -- and fabrics were distressed. Shearling coats were given outsized collars, and linen trenches were dyed to create a grungy cast. Trousers were of the season’s legging variety, in leather or Lurex, and the new bag was a slouchy saddle style.

For the daintier woman, there were ladylike jackets shaped through the waist, decorated with folds and puckers at the hems, or panels of tulle. And layered under snug leather jackets, the gowns were practically a call to arms, one in a bias-cut blood-red waxed organza, with a featherweight skirt that fluttered in the breeze like a revolutionary flag.

At Yohji Yamamoto the mood was more melancholy, with menswear-inspired suits in super-sized silhouettes. Cuffed pants with paper bag waists and droopy jackets came in dark plaids and pinstripes, some fading to gray at the bottom, as if the color had been washed out. With sad, blue-rimmed eyes and mussed hair, these women looked down and out, as if they had nothing left but the clothes on their backs. The bluesy soundtrack, which included George Gershwin’s “Summertime,” brought to mind New Orleans, the most French of American cities, where residents were celebrating their first post-Katrina Mardi Gras. A tufted wool poncho emblazoned with a cross evoked the spray-painted Xs used to mark the houses with the dead, and slouchy trench coats with jagged hems looked as if they had been ripped apart. Then things brightened with azure pieces in washed velvet -- boxy jackets and long skirts -- and fluid, black silk suits with pants that pooled around the ankles.

Undercover’s Jun Takahashi mummified his models, covering their faces with hoods pierced with silver rings and jewelry where the ears, nose, eyebrows and lips would be. At times the body was bandaged too. A camel knit sweater came with strips that wound around the torso, and a cream silk camisole had lace ribbons that wrapped around the shoulders. A gray wool jacket had fraying seams spiraling around it, and black pants laced around the legs.

The hoods and piercings hinted at S&M; but also brought to mind prisoners of war, all of which took away from the clothes, which were some of the most wearable Takahashi has ever designed.

Viktor & Rolf imagined women protected by the armor of femininity, and here too models’ faces were covered, but by black fencing masks. Lady suits with boxy jackets and pencil skirts, little black dresses and an old-school, couture-like presentation tapped into the 1950s stereotype, but the voice-over hinted at something more dangerous. “Don’t touch,” spoke a female voice. “No communication of any kind.”

So the ruffles down the front of a tuxedo dress were coated in silver, a black dress with fishnet cap sleeves was fixed with a gleaming metal bow at the waist, and the cuffs of a ruffle-front khaki trench coat looked as if they had been dipped in silver. The sleeves of a cream puffer coat were bound like sausage links, and the starched white shirt cuffs on a charcoal jersey shift removable. The finale gown was a molten silver full-skirted party dress with pleats so sharp they could cut like a knife. The message? Don’t let the clothes fool you, she’s a man eater.

Japanese designer Naoki Takizawa started his show for Issey Miyake by sending out model warriors in leather breastplates. Presented at Paris’ future museum of tribal arts, built by architect Jean Nouvel, the collection featured a number of ideas and unusual materials, perhaps too many. Takizawa drew inspiration from Japanese artisans, calling on Kyoto basket-makers to weave bamboo bags and using a kimono-printing technique to color silk taffeta panels on military jackets. Leather skirts and leggings were treated to create shaded effects; denim was coated and rubbed. Heat-cut pleated fabric swathed the body in points resembling thorns, and multicolored mountain-climbing cords were draped across black dresses like tribal jewelry.

With a menagerie on the runway that included a poodle in a corset, a greyhound in a lace-print, anti-scratch cone, an owl and a hairless cat, one wondered if last year’s staff cuts and restructuring weren’t enough, and Jean Paul Gaultier had resorted to designing pet wear to increase revenue.

Stupid pet tricks aside, the collection was actually hauntingly beautiful, full of filmy dresses and skirted coats straight out of a gothic romance. Working in a dark palette of plums, smoky grays, brown and black, Gaultier touched on many of the season’s trends, pairing a black lace corset with a tuxedo jacket and wide trousers, and embroidering a black velvet trapeze coat. Trench coats were supremely executed, one in a crinkled lavender silk, another in black with a crocodile corset belt.

And the model emerging from the dry ice mist in a black velvet gown with sheer tulle overlay looked like a Bronte heroine ready to rule the world -- this one or the next.